Homecoming 23: Meanwhile…

This is the second-to-last page of the arc! Oh gosh! The timing is actually perfect, because I am going to be at Anime Expo from June 30th-July 2nd, and then my mother is visiting for a week. Since I am going to take my usual break between comic arcs, that means I won’t be missing any updates! Yay!

I think it’s less seeing her human and more seeing her hair up like that. We saw her in human form plenty in Orientations, after all, but always with her hair down. I like it myself, along with Michelle’s longer hair. Back in Orientations, I don’t think Michelle’s hair was quite long enough to pull back in a low ponytail. Things like that make for a nice, subtle passage of time cue.

it WAS in one-eyed bear, look when they’re in the car, at Michelle in the front passenger seat, she’s got one of Jim’s feathers in her charm, bright orange, can’t miss it against Michelle’s green Riddler suit. It wasn’t revealed in the comic, per say, but think Kory mentioned somewhere that it was on the off-chance she could channel some of Jim’s natural luck.

Heh. I think we all saw this coming. Now, the question is whether Merial is holding up the other end of Jim’s bet, and fishing for an absolute, solid denial, or whether she’s just being nosy and dishing out unwanted relationship advice. She might even have forgotten that Jim offered a bet with her – she’s probably become good at tuning him out selectively. However, I suspect that she would also be subtle enough to avoid revealing the existence of a bet while fishing for information. Not that that might matter much in the final analysis…

Greg: …and Jim hasn’t shut up about it since we got back – you know he had a bet on with Merial about whether we were or weren’t dating?

I like the “Submarine Voyage” poster in the background (it’s more visible in the panel below with no dialogue). As with almost everything seen in backgrounds here, this is real too. Check out the Wikipedia article on “Submarine Voyage.”

I was at Disneyland recently, and the submarine ride is still there! I had thought they were closing it permanently years ago. It’s been “rebooted” to a “Finding Nemo” theme though. No mermaids (sigh).

oh good god I just cackled SO LOUD… My dog got up and walked away ’cause she’s old and cranky and doesn’t like loud noises xD Merial and Jim are one and the same, other than the species thing and… everything.
Loving it!

That’s about what I was thinking too. We’ve seen in past yawns that Michelle has some rather impressive teeth and a good bite radius. Michelle may be somewhat civilized by mom’s influence, but she is still an eagle/lion.

Back in part 4 of Orientations, Michelle does mention that, after her Turning, she started to prefer rare steak. You may have something there. At some point, digging through character stuff Kory’s posted over the years, I’ve seen a note that Jim’s favorite food is something he’s hunted down himself and eaten right then, so it’s not unprecedented in the world of Skin Deep.

that, right there, is probably as much an innate preference as it also how he grew up, since his family strikes me as “old fashioned.” Though, does make me wonder just how many old scottish sheep herders have had a day of standing around watching their flock take a turn for the odd when they see a great orange an green blur swoop down and snag a ram. Followed by his fellows wondering where he got the good whiskey, and how he’s hiding it from his wife after hearing that tale.

This is why I love the comments here. Only we could go from the topic of Michelle eating Merial, to Jimothy eating a sheep and making a farmer wonder where the good whiskey came from.
And if thats not good enough, try telling someone this out of context.

I really love this comic. Is there currently some problem with the webserver, though? I have been enjoying the heck out of reading the archives, except for one thing. Whenever i go to the next page, there is about a 75% chance i will get an error page, instead of the next comic. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes for the next page to load. Is it a bandwidth problem, or some other hosting error? Do you have a mirror site? Is there an Archive page somewhere i just haven’t found from which one can go directly to a page, more specific than the “Story Arc” broad chapter links? That would be really helpful, especially with the site probems…

Aside from that, you are the awesomeness. Thanks for sharing your comic!

PS: this is the error page that constantly comes up:

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

Re-reading this story and the comments, and I saw that folks had ID’d which building and floor Greg and Jim were in. So I thought I’d see if I could find which building Michelle and Merial have their room in.
They have a top floor apartment in Hammons House. Not so sure where on the floor, as kory has Michelle and her mother’s speech bubbles coming out of a window approximately mid way along the Southern side of the level. But in this strip, Michelle and Merial’s speech bubbles are coming from a South-East corner apartment.